SALES VS. CULINARY... my opinion.

In the 1960s through the 1980s, when I was an active caterer in Chicago, catering was all about food. Buffet displays and plate-served dinners were done with traditional straightforward food presentation. The chef, who was often the owner of the company, was the leader and power player of the company.

The chef’s words and thoughts became the rules. Kitchens were kingdoms. The chef had the first and last word. Salespeople needed to get the chef’s permission for just about anything a customer wanted to do. Taste and function were the main goals of serving food. It was not much like today’s carefully designed and entertaining food presentations involving texture, action, color, height, exotic tableware and a plethora of buffet serving pieces and vessels. Before 1990, ideas for what to serve usually came from the chef. Today’s menus are influenced by a caterer’s culinary team, the Food Network, hospitality magazines, clients and a never-ending number of how-to entertaining books.

Today, customers usually come with their own vision of what and how they want to offer food and beverage to their guests. This has resulted in a major swing of influence in catering companies: Instead of selling chef-created ideas to clients, the sales team is bringing the clients’ ideas to the culinary team.

Culinary ideas come from both the culinary team and the sales staff, but since the salespeople speak first with shoppers, they are now more of a driving force than the chef. All parts of your company contribute to the overall success of your business, but the salespeople are the single most important element in the success. As the title of one of my books clearly states: If You Don’t Sell It, You Can’t Cook It.

The salesperson listens to the dreams and fears of the shopper, overcomes them with creative solutions and then makes the promises that turn shoppers into deposit-paying clients. There are always exceptions, but overall, today’s catering business needs to be salesdriven rather than culinary-driven.

I am in no way suggesting that the culinary team is unimportant or that the sales team is more important. In fact, the culinary team must have input into all culinary decisions. Culinary staff must have veto power over anything that may damage the company image or cause a sanitation breach.